All Roads to China has a post up called Innovation and Incubation in China – The System is the Problem I paste a quote of his here. In China, the education system (incl first employers) have a job to educate students, and they do it well (as shown through international testing), while in the West […]

The highly successful Western GM of Bosch Siemens Wuxi likes to say this. “Fear must be driven out.” What he sees is that fear is a big enemy of high quality production and overall business growth. I so agree. When workers fear, their creativity dives. Their initiative goes down. Reporting of problems goes down. Workers […]

I may not catch this webinar, but what they say in the opening here is so right…. Hiring + 90 Wisdom and M4R Model: Managing and Engaging in the First Quarter Hiring the right person – check. Managing the new hire – check. Engaging the new hire – uh oh! The first 90 days can […]

When I think over my 20 years of experience in China, I can list what made me succeed and fail pretty readily. Success: Hired the right first person who worked for me and the company capably, hard and loyally Created enough safety so that workers told me what the problems were as they saw it. […]

None of us in leadership can avoid giving stern warnings at times.I also spanked my children when they were young. What I want to note is we need to have many more tools in our bag, so we rarely use these. We have failed as leaders when we must resort to threats with our workers. […]

Foreign Entrepreneurs in China listed some top concerns for US companies in China. Here are her top three from Amcham Shanghai: Key Business Challenges in China (%) (*) Rising Costs (91%) Human Resource Constraints (90%) Increasing Competition (83%) For her complete list look here. Foxconn said that salaries for many workers would immediately […]

How often do you sit down with your direct reports and just hear what they have to say? Have them plan a 15-30 or even 60 minute time with you. Assure them of non-defensiveness. Then really hear them. Interact but do not take over. I do some form of this monthly. Sometimes it is formal, […]

In a previous post, I said good leaders develop or fire. I emphasized that they do not use workers. I want to add to that to make your success bigger. I often see Western Leaders afraid to handle a Chinese leader problem or shortcoming as they are afraid of what will happen. One bad fit […]

Let me start out with a Pat Lencioni Quote which you can find here, “Sit down and think about each of the people who work for you. Identify something about them that you admire, that you genuinely believe they do better than you. That shouldn’t be hard, because every employee has skills or talents that […]

I here quote Vivek Wadhwa in a Washington Post article I fell across at LinkedIn. During my recent trip, I also taught classes at Tsinghua University, for an entrepreneurship program run by UC-Berkeley’s Center for Entrepreneurship. The students there were very much like those I teach at Duke and Berkeley. They were hungry for knowledge, […]